The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus in which a plurality of input data from different input units are synthesized and an output image in which the plurality of input data are synthesized is recorded to a recording medium.
There are several image processing apparatuses which have a capability to synthesize a plurality of input data to an image, so that the image is output to a recording medium. In a conventional image processing apparatus of the type described above, a scanner is used to read input data from an original document, and a printer is used to record output data to a recording medium. In this conventional apparatus, two or more pieces of input data are synthesized to an output image by means of the synthesizing capability, and the output image in which the pieces of input data are included is printed to a recording medium.
However, in the above described conventional apparatus, when input data from a text/graphic data file produced by a wordprocessor or the like is combined with another input data, it is necessary to produce a hard copy of the data file by printing input data of the data file to a recording sheet by using the printer of the apparatus. It is also necessary to read the input data from the hard copy by using the scanner of the apparatus before the synthesizing process is carried out.
Therefore, the above described conventional apparatus has a problem in that the hard copy produced before the synthesizing is wasteful, and that the picture quality of the output image will deteriorate since a copy of the original data is produced and the intermediate data read from the copy is used in the synthesizing process.